This invention relates to advertising, and in particular to monitoring conversion of advertisements and determining fees charged to advertisers.
Online advertising has become an increasingly profitable business that allows entities to present advertisements to users viewing websites or accessing content through native applications. Entities that advertise online and online systems presenting advertisements have an interest in tracking conversion events resulting from presentation of an online advertisement to determine the effectiveness of online advertisements. However, users often are associated with multiple devices (e.g., mobile phone, tablet, laptop computer, etc.), so a device that presents an advertisement to the user may differ from the device used by the user to perform the conversion event, complicating tracking of conversion events.
Additionally, some percentage of users will typically perform a conversion event associated with an online advertisement regardless of whether they were presented with the advertisement. This may artificially inflate the perceived effectiveness of the advertisement. Additionally, this artificial inflation of an advertisement's effectiveness results in the advertiser overpaying to present the advertisement.